There’s been some talk of something like this in the past.
If a project materialized, would anyone here be interested
in working on it?
I’m not spearheading this myself, but I have friends who are
very interested in it. I’ll be an active participant in the
project.
Feel free to email me offlist.
Thanks,
Hal Fulton
What about onlist? Sounds interesting to me. What are the project
goals?
Gavin
On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 6:01:16 PM, Hal wrote:
There’s been some talk of something like this in the past.
If a project materialized, would anyone here be interested
in working on it?
I’m not spearheading this myself, but I have friends who are
very interested in it. I’ll be an active participant in the
project.
Feel free to email me offlist.
Sorry - missed the beginning of this thread, but it was I who spoke of this
before. Rubyx is the name, and I have yet to launch it publicly (Time… as
always)
However, Rubyx exists, works very nicely, and I’m using it in several
production environments.
It’s currently light on packages (containing only those I’ve added), but
supports all the usual stuff; samba, cups, hylafax, apache, qmail etc, and
the kde desktop. Also a brand new Ruby based init-script system
Rubyx comes in the form of a script, which downloads all packages in source
form and builds everything from scratch with your choice of toolchain
versions.
Its been designed to be real-easy to add your favourite package, even if a
relative novice at coding. In most cases, you can just copy a similar package
object and change the name 
I would love some help with Rubyx; It’s got loads of new features which you
have to play with to appreciate. If anybody is interested in getting
involved, if only in testing, then drop me a mail off list and I’ll show you
how to get started.
A few words of warning though
1) Rubyx improves on the FSH, imo
2) Broadband, (or one hell of a lot of patience) is required while rubyx
downloads the sources. Unless you can persaude me to send you a cd
3) Rubyx uses the free (for Open Source Development only) version of
bitkeeper to get kernel and other sources (linus uses bitkeeper), so if you
are a die-hard fsf nut then don’t bother
4) Well, there must be more dire warnings, but I can’t think of any…
Perhaps I’ll setup a mailing list if enough people are interested in trying
it.
Andrew
On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 11:02 am, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 6:01:16 PM, Hal wrote:
There’s been some talk of something like this in the past.
If a project materialized, would anyone here be interested
in working on it?I’m not spearheading this myself, but I have friends who are
very interested in it. I’ll be an active participant in the
project.Feel free to email me offlist.
I was playing with an idea like this awhile back. I’ve always hated
that init.d or rc.d sytle scripts (I’ve since moved a lot to
daemontools).
I might be able to help as I have good experience with LinuxFromScratch and I’ve built some distros for diskless nodes.
Michael Garriss
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 08:03:19PM +0900, Andrew Walrond wrote:
On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 11:02 am, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 6:01:16 PM, Hal wrote:
There’s been some talk of something like this in the past.
If a project materialized, would anyone here be interested
in working on it?I’m not spearheading this myself, but I have friends who are
very interested in it. I’ll be an active participant in the
project.Feel free to email me offlist.
Sorry - missed the beginning of this thread, but it was I who spoke of this
before. Rubyx is the name, and I have yet to launch it publicly (Time… as
always)However, Rubyx exists, works very nicely, and I’m using it in several
production environments.It’s currently light on packages (containing only those I’ve added), but
supports all the usual stuff; samba, cups, hylafax, apache, qmail etc, and
the kde desktop. Also a brand new Ruby based init-script system
I’m not in much of a position to try it out myself, but I’d certainly
listen in on a ML if you set it up.
Gavin
On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 9:03:19 PM, Andrew wrote:
[…]
Perhaps I’ll setup a mailing list if enough people are interested in trying
it.
If anyone wants to contribute add-ons to PLD (http://pld-linux.org) to
be ruby-based, I don’t think that’s at odds with the development plan:
PLD aims to give choice where there is one. That can include base
infrastructure like init scripts.
I don’t know if Andrew would like to contribute any of his work, but I’d
be willing to package it up. Also, I’d love to hear what everyone’s
thoughts on what “should” come with a system that supports Ruby – how
much do you expect to install yourself, how do you expect a system
package manager to work with Ruby, and what would you like done for you?
Ari
I was playing with an idea like this awhile back. I’ve always hated
that init.d or rc.d sytle scripts (I’ve since moved a lot to
daemontools).
Snap. Infact djb’s daemontools were the inspiration for my ruby init-script
and shares many features. I also use djb’s dnscache, tinydns and qmail
I might be able to help as I have good experience with LinuxFromScratch and
I’ve built some distros for diskless nodes.
Excellent. Do you have bitkeeper, cvs, cvsup and rsync installed? (and ruby,
obviously…)?
On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 2:48 pm, Michael Garriss wrote:
I’m interesting too.I’m developing some app. with Ruby-GTK2 and I would
like write some admin app. to the project.
–
Enrique Meza emeza@saisamx.com
Working on this now, I’ll let you know. I have a new box (well it’s on
brown truck somewhere headed my way) that I could experiment on.
I also have some experience with cross compiling toolchains (don’t try
this home kids).
Regards,
Michael Garriss
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 10:55:15PM +0900, Andrew Walrond wrote:
On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 2:48 pm, Michael Garriss wrote:
I was playing with an idea like this awhile back. I’ve always hated
that init.d or rc.d sytle scripts (I’ve since moved a lot to
daemontools).Snap. Infact djb’s daemontools were the inspiration for my ruby init-script
and shares many features. I also use djb’s dnscache, tinydns and qmailI might be able to help as I have good experience with LinuxFromScratch and
I’ve built some distros for diskless nodes.Excellent. Do you have bitkeeper, cvs, cvsup and rsync installed? (and ruby,
obviously…)?
Michael Garriss wrote:
I also have some experience with cross compiling toolchains (don’t try
this home kids).
Ugh, tell me about it. What’s worse is when you have to pass a CFLAGS
setting every time you build something. Most configure scripts don’t know
how to deal with a situation like this at all.
Anyhow, I have experience building a linux distro from scratch. Granted,
it’s running on an embedded processor out of 16 megs of flash, but I may
have useful skills to contribute here for desktop builds too, and I’d like
to do so.
Is the goal to make the distro gentoo-like? I have it at home and it is a
pretty slick system. I understand its portage package management system
uses Python underneath. I like portage, but if I were to write a package
management system myself I’d change a lot of details. It seems like
portage is probably written so that it’s tied to the commandline. A more
sensible way of doing things to me would be to have easily exchanged UIs
for package management, text as a basic default, but GTK, QT, etc. as first
class citizens.
Ben
Michael Garriss wrote:
I also have some experience with cross compiling toolchains (don’t try
this home kids).Ugh, tell me about it. What’s worse is when you have to pass a CFLAGS
setting every time you build something. Most configure scripts don’t know
how to deal with a situation like this at all.
I have almost completed x86-64 support in rubyx (64bit native). The Rubyx
script does all the cross compiling for you automatically. But it was
certainly a pain getting it all to work…
Anyhow, I have experience building a linux distro from scratch. Granted,
it’s running on an embedded processor out of 16 megs of flash, but I may
have useful skills to contribute here for desktop builds too, and I’d like
to do so.Is the goal to make the distro gentoo-like? I have it at home and it is a
pretty slick system. I understand its portage package management system
uses Python underneath. I like portage, but if I were to write a package
management system myself I’d change a lot of details. It seems like
portage is probably written so that it’s tied to the commandline. A more
sensible way of doing things to me would be to have easily exchanged UIs
for package management, text as a basic default, but GTK, QT, etc. as first
class citizens.
Yes, its like gentoo, but far more customizable. You can say Build me a new
distro please; I’ll have linux-2.6-test7, and use gcc 3.3.2 with libc-HEAD
using the NPTL. Compile everything for the pentium4, using these flags…
Or you can just go with the defaults, which are also good, and safer
On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 11:18 pm, Ben Giddings wrote:
Gentoo-style, all the way; you can produce a sub-distro with pre-compiled
binaries based on it, and I have to tell you, their emerge system and the
custom compilation flags for everything are just the best. I love Gentoo.
Plus, I think their way of handling packages is far simpler than just about
anything else out there, so it would probably be the easiest to duplicate and
offers power comparable to debian’s package system.
My 2 pesos.
Sean O'Dell
On Wednesday 22 October 2003 03:18 pm, Ben Giddings wrote:
Michael Garriss wrote:
I also have some experience with cross compiling toolchains (don’t try
this home kids).Ugh, tell me about it. What’s worse is when you have to pass a CFLAGS
setting every time you build something. Most configure scripts don’t know
how to deal with a situation like this at all.Anyhow, I have experience building a linux distro from scratch. Granted,
it’s running on an embedded processor out of 16 megs of flash, but I may
have useful skills to contribute here for desktop builds too, and I’d like
to do so.Is the goal to make the distro gentoo-like? I have it at home and it is a
pretty slick system. I understand its portage package management system
uses Python underneath. I like portage, but if I were to write a package
management system myself I’d change a lot of details. It seems like
portage is probably written so that it’s tied to the commandline. A more
sensible way of doing things to me would be to have easily exchanged UIs
for package management, text as a basic default, but GTK, QT, etc. as first
class citizens.
Andrew Walrond wrote:
I have almost completed x86-64 support in rubyx (64bit native). The Rubyx
script does all the cross compiling for you automatically. But it was
certainly a pain getting it all to work…
Cool stuff, I’d like to check it out.
Yes, its like gentoo, but far more customizable. You can say Build me a new
distro please; I’ll have linux-2.6-test7, and use gcc 3.3.2 with libc-HEAD
using the NPTL. Compile everything for the pentium4, using these flags…
Or you can just go with the defaults, which are also good, and safer
Cool, now when you say “build me a new distro”, that will typically include
a bootloader, a window manager (Gnome or KDE), a default shell, a web
browser, an editor, and a bunch of other things. Do you get to choose
them? What are the defaults and what others are supported?
Also, if you’re cross compiling the distro, what format are the outputs in?
(straight binaries, tarballs, another binary package, …) Also, how
easy is it to make a live CD, or an install CD?
Could someone who knows both give a bullet-point summary of the differences
between Rubyx and Lunar Linux?
Ben
Cool, now when you say “build me a new distro”, that will typically include
a bootloader, a window manager (Gnome or KDE), a default shell, a web
browser, an editor, and a bunch of other things. Do you get to choose
them? What are the defaults and what others are supported?
I’ll answer for x86; x86-64 should be similar when complete
Yes. Grub is included. Lilo would take minutes to add
Kde works fine; Gnome used to work, but needs some attention atm
I just use Konqueror; Have had mozilla working but needs bringing upto date.
Shell is bash. Xemacs and Vim included. I can add any other editor you care to
mention in a few minutes - thats the beauty of rubyx.
You have compile control of the packages you build into your distro, including
(supported) versions if you don’t want the default
Also, if you’re cross compiling the distro, what format are the outputs in?
(straight binaries, tarballs, another binary package, …) Also, how
Rubyx builds a native distro to your specification into a specified dir or
partition, from source.
For x86-64 on a machine running a 64bit kernel but 32bit userspace, rubyx
builds a cross-compile toolchain, uses that to build native toolchain and
fundamental packages, chroots and builds everything else from a pure 64bit
environment. I have Lots of build issues with lots of packages right now, but
am making good headway (with x86-64)
easy is it to make a live CD, or an install CD?
Dunno; never done it. I always build straight into a partition using an
existing linux installation, or build the distro on another machine and boot
the new pc with a rescue cd like bbc, then scp it over.
Live cd should be real easy to do though.
Could someone who knows both give a bullet-point summary of the differences
between Rubyx and Lunar Linux?
I doubt it, since I’m the only person using rubyx, and I haven’t tried lunar
yet
Andrew
On Thursday 23 Oct 2003 9:49 pm, Ben Giddings wrote:
Andrew Walrond wrote:
Yes. Grub is included. Lilo would take minutes to add
Kde works fine; Gnome used to work, but needs some attention atm
I just use Konqueror; Have had mozilla working but needs bringing upto date.
Shell is bash. Xemacs and Vim included. I can add any other editor you care to
mention in a few minutes - thats the beauty of rubyx.
So what is “Rubyx” so far? What code exists there that makes it distinct
from RedHat, Gentoo or Lunar Linux? What are your goals with the project?
Could someone who knows both give a bullet-point summary of the differences
between Rubyx and Lunar Linux?I doubt it, since I’m the only person using rubyx, and I haven’t tried lunar
yet
Hmm, from looking at the Lunar web site and looking at what you’ve
described, they sound remarkably similar. Both are geared towards
compiling from source. It sounds like they might have more infrastructure
in place, but you probably have a more capable build environment.
I’d like to work on a Ruby-based Linux distribution, particularly on either
the package management part or the init script part, but I think it would
be a shame if there are two Ruby-based Linux distributions which aren’t
working together.
Ben
On Thursday 23 Oct 2003 9:49 pm, Ben Giddings wrote: